


In a Strange Country

by yorsminroud



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke, Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-12
Updated: 2016-06-12
Packaged: 2018-07-14 15:53:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7178498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yorsminroud/pseuds/yorsminroud
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While Strange squinted at the map, Norrell shuffled around the clearing, careful not to stray too far from Strange lest he be wrenched back. He rubbed a shiny leaf between his thumb and forefinger, scowled at a branch that snagged on his coat, and overturned a flat stone with his foot.</p><p>Etched on the stone in tiny, cramped handwriting were the words: Arbores loqui latine.</p><p>--</p><p>In which Strange and Norrell stumble upon Cabeswater, and Adam and Ronan help them out. Post-TRK.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In a Strange Country

**Author's Note:**

> Where is all the Raven King crossover fic?!?

Strange emerged from the pool of water and frowned. “Where are we?”

“You nearly killed me,” said Norrell.

They had exited the King’s Roads via a deep, clear pool of water. Strange had broken the surface, splashed around for a bit, sunk to the bottom and trapped Norrell underneath him. It had taken them a moment to find their bearings. Also Norrell could not swim. Now Norrell was feeling very disgruntled about it, and meanwhile they were in a deep wood with no conscious life in sight.

“This must be Faerie,” Strange said. “You can feel the magic. What part of Faerie is this?”

“I could have died,” Norrell said.

“I am surprised to have ended up in Faerie at all,” Strange admitted. He paced the perimeter of the pool and examined a low-hanging willow. “Our detour must have led us in a different direction than I thought. If only the bridge over Sinners’ Creek had not been missing its keystone; I am sure that bridge would have led us to the United States. Or at least somewhere east of the Atlantic – maybe a tropical island. I wouldn’t have minded that. English rain is all well and good, but it does get gloomy.”

“Tropics!” wailed Norrell. “He’s tampering with forces best left alone, and he wants to go coco-nut picking. I told you this would happen. You have gotten us hopelessly lost at last. Lanchester _very clearly states_ that the King’s Roads are unstable constructs that ought not to be tampered with, and here you are using them as tiles to play scotch-hopper!”

Strange ignored him cheerfully. Norrell’s constant nagging had ceased to bother him, even though they were trapped together in a portable tomb of eternal darkness. This was because Norrell’s whole personality, whether Norrell would admit it or not, had softened: his brand of tense, possessive terror had given way to a sort of resigned curmudgeonliness that Strange found almost endearing. After all, what good had Norrell’s lifelong fear done him? It hadn’t saved him from the fairy’s curse. So Norrell might mutter and wring his hands about traveling the King’s Roads, but travel them he did. In fact, Strange suspected he was secretly enjoying himself.

Strange drew a map from his inside pocket, wrung it out, and spread it on the soft grass next to the pool. The map was a mishmashed work-in-progress, each new road etched in whatever inklike substance Strange had on him at the time. Despite the map’s convoluted appearance, Norrell and Strange had found much to their surprise that it actually worked. The King’s Roads did not follow ordinary laws of space and time, but they did appear to be consistent. If a road led from Venice to Lost-hope, it would always lead from Venice to Lost-hope. (Although it might not lead from Lost-hope to Venice.)

Now Strange found a piece of charcoal behind his ear, drew a new line from that big ugly mirror in St. Petersburg to an empty spot on the map, and labeled it: _???_

“Oh, yes, very helpful,” sneered Norrell.

Strange rubbed his face and smeared charcoal dust all over his left cheekbone. Norrell gave up, meandered to the other side of the clearing, and glanced wistfully at the starless sky.

The woods were peaceful, if a little chilly. The willow Strange had noticed earlier dipped into the water, black and silver in the darkness. All around the pond and the willow were tall, silvery beech trees. A less aggressively academic man than Norrell, or a less absentminded one than Strange, might have noticed something odd about the sound of the wind in the branches, but sadly no such men were present.

The pond was as silver as the trees. So was the dewy grass. The air was still and cool. While Strange squinted at the map, Norrell shuffled around the clearing, careful not to stray too far from Strange lest he be wrenched back. He rubbed a shiny leaf between his thumb and forefinger, scowled at a branch that snagged on his coat, and overturned a flat stone with his foot. Then he stared at the stone.

“Strange,” he said after a while. “Look at this.”

“Hm?”

“ _Look_.”

Strange snapped out of his reverie. He came and looked.

Etched on the stone in tiny, cramped handwriting were the words: _Arbores loqui latine_.

“The trees speak Latin,” Strange translated. He looked up. The beeches’ branches were still rustling. When he and Norrell quieted, a vague pattern in the sound became discernable: _Quis es. Quis es. Ronan. Quis es._

Norrell said, “The trees’ Latin isn’t very good.”

“Be nice, Norrell. I’m sure they’re doing their best.”

Norrell sniffed.

Strange spent another moment examining his map, then shrugged and folded it up. “Can you think of any notable areas of Faerie where the trees speak Latin? It seems like something Pale would have written about.”

“I have read all of Pale’s works ten times over and I can assure you he did no such thing.”

“Twenty times, more like. You keep _Magical Languages_ on your nightstand.”

Norrell did not argue the point. In fact he seemed rather pleased that Strange had noticed. “Catherine of Winchester wrote of a Faerie castle whose gargoyles all spoke gibberish.”

“Oh, yes, Mad-castle.” Strange looked around. “I do not think this is Mad-castle.”

“We could return to the library and read about it to make sure,” said Norrell hopefully. But Strange only frowned at him and strode off into the trees, and Norrell was forced to follow.

* * *

Ronan woke up.

For a second he couldn’t move his limbs. His heart hammered. What had he brought back? He hadn’t intended to bring anything back. He hadn’t even been dreaming of anything, he had been walking through his new Cabeswater alone, carefully and quietly shaping the leaves, toying with the idea of adding some fruit trees, he had not meant to bring anything back –

Then he gasped for breath, and Adam sat bolt upright. “Ronan? Ronan?”

“I brought something back,” Ronan gasped. He slammed on the light. “I don’t know what it is.”

“A night horror?”

“I wasn’t having a nightmare.”

Adam glanced warily around the room. When nothing leapt out of the shadows at them, he swung his feet out of bed to check underneath it. “What were you dreaming of?”

“Nothing.”

Seconds passed. Nothing horrible happened. Ronan’s heartbeat slowed. He reached for Adam, who swayed helplessly into the curve of Ronan’s palm before tearing himself away to look in the closet. Ronan frowned, then got out of bed too, partly to protect Adam from whatever he might have manifested but mostly to drape himself across Adam’s back. “I was exploring Cabeswater.”

“Did you find anything?”

“There’s nothing to find. It’s brand-new. I haven’t put anything in it yet.” Ronan pressed his face to the curve of Adam’s neck. Adam’s breath caught. Now that they were awake and the light was on and Ronan could move his limbs again, his earlier terror seemed unwarranted, if not downright silly. “Maybe I just had an ordinary sleep terror and not a Greywaren spaz.”

“Mm,” mumbled Adam. He rested his face and chest against the wall next to the closet, let Ronan’s body press his own body deeper into it. “I hope not. You’re fucked up enough, Lynch.”

Ronan laughed, a little meanly. Then he sighed and thought about his dream. “I was listening to the trees.”

“And?”

Ronan closed his eyes, trying to remember. Admittedly he wasn’t trying very hard. Adam’s back was warm, and his hipbones were sharp. “They were saying my name. Quis es. Quis es.” His eyes flew open. Suddenly he felt sick. “Adam, there’s someone in Cabeswater.”

Adam jolted, twisted out of Ronan’s grasp and turned to face him. “Who?” And then his eyes snagged on something past Ronan’s head, and Ronan turned around to see what he was looking at.

Plastered against the wall next to Ronan’s side of the bed was a smooth-edged circle of blackness.

It wasn’t mobile. If the bedside light hadn’t been on, it wouldn’t have been visible at all. As it was, though, the cream-colored wallpaper was illuminated everywhere but there, and the blackness was vivid, like a hole in Ronan’s consciousness. It looked like something round was casting a shadow against the wall. Only, of course, nothing was.

“What is it?” Adam whispered.

“It’s not mine,” Ronan said defensively.

“Who do you think dreamed it up? Chainsaw?”

Scowling, Ronan released Adam and strode over to the shadow. When it didn’t dart away or flash hidden teeth at him, he prodded it. It swallowed his finger and then released it. Just like an ordinary shadow.

“I think it’s harmless.”

Adam approached, too, sideways and wary. “What is it?”

“It’s not mine,” Ronan repeated. It wasn’t. Everything he dreamed up, whether it be a puzzle box or a night-terror or Gansey’s Camaro, was always instantly recognizable to him as a manifestation of his own inner self. This was foreign. Not malevolent, but alien. “Someone else brought it to Cabeswater.”

* * *

They drove to the forest. They were unable to budge the hunk of darkness on Ronan’s wall, so with only minor hesitation they left it there. Now they whipped across the Virginia interstate in Ronan’s BMW, their hands laced together on top of the center console. Sometimes, when they did this, Ronan could not look at his own right hand because he would become too overwhelmed to keep driving.

The new Cabeswater was in the same place as the old Cabeswater, out in the middle of nowhere, smack on top of the ley line. Because Gansey and Blue were still traveling with Cheng, they hadn’t seen it yet; and because Adam was no longer hooked into the wood, sometimes Ronan was the only one who could even tell the difference. Which was why Ronan was surprised when Adam said, “There’s something wrong with it.”

Ronan pulled the BMW to the shoulder and leaned out the window, staring.

“There are no stars,” Adam said.

A column of darkness rose from Cabeswater’s center. On either side of it the stars glittered thickly like spilled sugar.

They drove to the forest’s border, then got out. Ronan pressed a palm against the outermost tree as Adam looked on wistfully. “Well?”

“It doesn’t _feel_ messed up. Just a little... I dunno, confused. No, curious.”

“It can join the club.”

“You coming, Parrish?”

“I’m coming.”

* * *

“I don’t think we _are_ in Faerie,” said Strange after a while.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“We haven’t seen any fairies, though.” Strange considered it. “Or people.”

Norrell pointed to a snow-white deer watching them from behind a tree. It might have been carved from marble. “What do you call that?”

“That is a deer, my dear Norrell. They have them in England.”

“It’s _magical_ , is the point. I’ve been practicing magic since you were in the cradle –”

“Oh, for the love of –”

“– and any magician worth his salt could tell that magical influence positively _pervades_ this space –”

“Certainly you’ve been doing _magic_ longer than I have, if you call sitting in a stuffy library reading dull texts _magic_ , but _I_ was treading the King’s Roads and attending fairy parties while you were still holed up writing nasty articles and stealing everyone else’s property, so I think if _anyone_ here can detect fairy influence –”

“Oh, yes, fairy influence!” Norrell flapped his hands at the surrounding darkness with surprising vigor. “Well done with the fairy influence!”

“I’m just saying,” Strange said. He began to sulk.

And then, without warning, the forest changed.

The deer reared up and bolted past them so fast the wind in his wake ruffled Strange’s hair and tugged at Norrell’s coat. (Norrell snatched the flapping hem irritatedly. What was it with this horrible wood and his coat?) A flock of flame-tipped birds shot past them like comets; a flock of solid gold houseflies swarmed in the birds’ wake; and all of the branches on all of the trees arched after the strange creatures as though begging to follow.

“Good heavens,” Strange remarked. “What do you think is over there?”

“I expect it’s a fairy, since we’re in _Faerie_ ,” said Norrell, and then a figure emerged from the trees.

It was a boy, but not like any boy Strange and Norrell had seen before. His eyes were as dark and unforgiving as two coals, his head shorn like Stephen Black’s. He was clad in a loose top and a heavy black leather jacket, and a pair of coarse dark trousers, and heavy boots. His companion was just as odd, with similar trousers, floppy pale hair, a thick shiny coat, and a strange shirt with letters scrawled across it. The companion kept his head cocked to one side.

“What the fuck?” said the dark-eyed boy.

Upon hearing him speak Strange was forced to admit that they must be in Faerie after all. The boy’s accent was so distorted that English couldn’t possibly have been his first language. Norrell must have thought the same, because he muttered under his breath, “Told you.” Then he hid behind Strange.

“Hello,” Strange said.

“Who the hell are you?”

“My name is Jonathan Strange, and this is my companion, Gilbert Norrell. Pleased to make your acquaintance. Might I inquire as to the name of your property? Your trees are quite magnificent.”

The dark-eyed boy stared. “What the fuck,” he said again.

“What does that mean?” Norrell murmured. “Is it a spell?”

“How should I know? You’re the one who keeps _Magical Languages_ on his nightstand.”

The boy snapped, “How’d you get to Cabeswater?”

Cabeswater. A worthy name. With a flourish Strange declared, “We traveled the King’s Roads. We are very formidable magicians. The same, in fact, responsible for the return of English magic.”

After a stiff silence the blond one said, in a voice rougher than that of his companion, “You mean you followed the ley line?”

“No,” said Strange. Although, maybe. He considered it. Ley lines crisscrossed all of England, though most of them had grown too weak to pinpoint, and it was entirely possible that John Uskglass had built some of his Roads on top of the ley lines. Perhaps he had even used the lines as a foundation. Now that Strange thought about it, some records indicated that the Roads and the lines had decayed simultaneously.... Strange rummaged for his map. “Norrell, what does Russinol have to say on ley lines?”

“What do you want to go checking Russinol for? My dear Strange, the authority on ley lines is certainly de Chepe. I know what you are thinking, and it is my opinion that the ley lines and the King’s Roads are two entirely different phenomena.”

“The Roads are not phenomena, though, Norrell. They are man-made.”

“You don’t know that. At any rate, the Roads run through Faerie, and ley lines adhere strictly to the English plane, so there can be no connection between them.”

“Oh, but surely Russinol’s theory of ley line magic has _some_ merit.”

“Russinol ought to have stayed home with his tipple,” said Norrell, but begrudgingly he peered over Strange’s shoulder at their map of the Roads.

“We’re not in England,” said the dark-eyed boy. Norrell and Strange both startled and glanced up at him with some displeasure. They had forgotten he was there. But they found themselves reminded very quickly indeed. The dark-eyed boy had halved the distance between them, and his fists and jaw were clenched. He practically emanated ferocity.

Slowly, calmly, Strange put the map back into his pocket.

“I’m gonna ask you one more time,” said the dark-eyed boy, in a voice that suggested he was not asking. “What. The fuck. Are you.”

“We did answer that question,” replied Strange, almost apologetically. He shifted his body subtly sideways, screening Norrell from view. Technically speaking he supposed Norrell _was_ a slightly superior magician, if you wanted to get specific about it, but Strange was the one who had taken up boxing in his youth. (Never mind that he had dropped it again after about four days.) “We are Jonathan Strange and Gilbert Norrell, English magicians. Surely you’ve heard of our plight, good sir. We have been cursed by a fairy to wander in eternal night and never part company. Now we roam the King’s Roads, Northern England, and occasionally, in wintertime, the South of France.”

“Seeking a way to break the curse,” Norrell added hastily. Sometimes Strange forgot to tell people that part.

“King? What king are you talking about?”

Now Strange was starting to suspect this wasn’t Faerie after all. Every fairy he’d ever met knew of John Uskglass. At least ninety percent of them had met him personally. “Why, the Raven King, of course.”

The dark-eyed boy recoiled as though Strange had threatened to punch him. Sucking in his breath, the blond boy said, “Glyn Dŵr?”

Strange racked his brains. “The dead Welsh fellow? What about him?”

“...The Raven King.”

“Glyn Dŵr isn’t the Raven King. I’m talking about John Uskglass.”

“These boys must be Welsh,” Norrell chimed in. “That explains it, Strange. We’re in Wales.”

“Ohhhh,” said Strange, nodding. “Of course.”

“This isn’t Wales,” said the blond boy.

Norrell continued, “The Welsh nicknamed Glyn Dŵr the Raven King after he died or went missing or whatever irresponsible thing he did. There’s a bit about him in Cadwallader. Just a paragraph, mind you. Glyn Dŵr was hardly a notable fellow.” The dark-eyed boy choked.

Puzzled, Strange said, “Why did they call him the Raven King? Did he do anything involving ravens?”

“No. But you know how the Welsh are.” As if to prove his point, Norrell eyed the two boys suspiciously.

“This isn’t Wales,” repeated the blond boy. “This is Virginia.”

“Virginia!” exclaimed Strange. “So we are in the Americas after all! HA! But how do you explain this magical wood?”

“I dreamt it,” the dark-eyed boy snarled.

Strange stared at him, fascinated. “ _No_.”

“Manifestation!” trilled Norrell. “Oh, I haven’t heard of a real example of manifestation magic since Winchester!”

“I believe Segundus managed something similar last fall, but to dream a _magical wood_ –”

“Oh, Segundus is a hack, Strange.”

“He broke the curse on Lady Pole!”

The blond boy broke in, “So you’re not looking for the Raven King?”

“Oh, heavens, no. I spent years searching for him and look where it got us.” Strange gestured ruefully at the darkness.

“I thought you said a fairy did that.”

“Well, Strange poking his nose into Uskglass’s affairs didn’t help,” Norrell interjected. Strange scowled, not unaffectionately.

The dark-eyed boy snapped, “I can’t fucking

* * *

deal with this.”

Adam raised an eyebrow at him. Ronan’s jaw was clenched so tight Adam was half surprised he hadn’t ground his teeth into powder. The same was true for his grip on the nearest branch.

“I kind of like them,” Adam said.

“Are you kidding me? Look at this creepy eternal-night shit!”

“Says the guy who once dragged a dying version of himself out of his dreams.”

“That was your fault.”

“I like them,” Adam repeated obstinately. “They remind me of us.”

“Gross. They’re old.”

“ _Us_ , stupid. You, me, Gansey, Blue, Noah.” Adam chewed the inside of his cheek, feeling suddenly vulnerable. “They’re... connected. Like we are.”

“They’re crusaders,” said Ronan. Surprised, Adam looked at him.

“Yes,” he said. “Exactly.”

“They remind you of Gansey.”

It seemed like sacrilege to say anybody was like Gansey, but, “I guess so. Well, the tall one, at least. The old guy’s a little more Noah.”

“Don’t insult Noah like that.” Meanwhile one of the strangers was reading the map upside-down, while the other chewed his thumbnail with extreme concentration. Even Ronan had to admit they looked fairly harmless. He frowned, then muttered, “Well, get them out of Cabeswater, anyway. I have shit to do.”

“Like what? You spend half your day asleep and the other half painting your walls.”

“Shut up. Hey, speaking of which, how am I going to get that fucking Dark Mark off my wall? Yo, Houdini!” bellowed Ronan. “How am I supposed to get your freaky shadow off my wall!”

“It travels with us,” the one called Strange shouted back, even though they were barely ten feet away. “It will leave when we do.”

“I dreamed a bit of it into the real world, jackass! I can’t get it out of my house! What’s your fucking Uskglass have to say about that, huh?”

“That’s hardly the most dangerous thing in your house, Ronan,” Adam said, but no one paid him any attention. Ronan was still seething (more out of stubbornness than any actual resentment, though), Norrell looked miffed, and Strange appeared downright astonished.

“Pardon me, but are you saying you _manifested_ our curse?”

“Can’t be done,” groused Norrell.

“Well I fucking did it, you old-timey geezer, so get rid of it or get out of my woods.”

Strange looked delighted. “You mean to say you _removed_ a piece of the darkness?”

Ronan grumbled. “Not on purpose.”

Strange said, “Would you show us?”

* * *

“What a curious carriage,” said Strange as he and Norrell wedged themselves into the back of Ronan’s car. “Did you dream this, too?”

“Yes."

“It’s ridiculous,” mumbled Norrell. “There is hardly enough room back here for one gentleman, let alone two.”

In the rearview mirror, Ronan flashed a sharp, nasty grin. Adam noticed it acutely. “I’m not a gentleman.”

They drove back to the Barns.

* * *

Even Ronan had to admit the magicians’ awe of the Barns was satisfying.

“Fascinating,” Strange breathed, gazing at the sleeping cows, the glowing flowers, the strange machines that whirred without any visible power source. The hand-sanded doorframes and handstained staircases. “Amazing. Norrell, _look_.”

“Yes, yes, I see it.” Norrell, unable to muster up even the semblance of disdain, gaped at a mobile of tiny paper ravens, flying after each other in eternal circles.

“Which spells do you use?” Strange demanded as they followed Ronan up the stairs. “I assumed, when I saw the wood, that you were using some variation of Winchester, but I don’t believe Winchester said anything about flying paper cranes.”

“Ravens.”

“Of course,” Strange murmured. “Of course.”

Adam asked, “Who’s Winchester?”

“Catherine of Winchester? Why, the great Aureate magician, of course.” An aside to Norrell: “They really don’t teach these American magicians their history, do they?”

“Magic is not suitable for the common man, Strange.”

“Oh, not this old spiel again. Can’t we feud over something new for a change?”

“I’m not a magician,” said Ronan. “Adam’s the magician.”

Adam jammed his hands into his pockets. “Was.”

“But no longer?” Adam shook his head, swallowing the lump that rose in his throat. “What happened?”

Adam opened his mouth, closed it again, then said lamely, “My power source sacrificed itself.”

Strange was starting to look exceedingly interested. “In what way?”

Adam did not want to talk about it. It wasn’t that he regretted Cabeswater’s sacrifice. In fact, he was happier than he’d ever been, with his semesters at Yale and holidays at the Barns and Gansey off in South America, alive, alive, alive. Adam’s body was full of a new magic, a magic made of burgeoning confidence and strength and love.

But still. New magic meant different magic. Sometimes he missed the old kind.

But the two magicians looked so genuinely interested, and Ronan had already nestled himself up against a wall with his arms crossed, waiting for Adam to tell the story, that Adam did.

“For heaven’s sake, lad,” said Strange, puzzled, when Adam was done. “You don’t need a power source to do magic!”

“Leave him alone,” Ronan barked.

“I do apologize, Mr. Lynch, but I cannot stand by and let another young man fall pray to the most common misconception among modern magicians.” Strange shot a resentful look at Norrell, who looked at the floor. “If I have heard one magician say he was only a _theoretical_ magician, I have heard a thousand. Mr. Parrish, if you wish to do magic, then do the magic. That is all there is to it. If you need books –”

“No!” said Norrell.

“Norrell, you hardly need sixteen copies of Ormskirk’s _Third Treatise on Summoning_.”

“You don’t know that. One copy has suffered water damage and another still has raven feathers in place of page sixty-four. Who is to say what might happen to the rest! No, no, no.”

“What if I could get rid of your creepy night thing?” Ronan said suddenly. “Would you give Adam your magic books then?”

“Ronan, no,” Adam protested, knee-jerk, but the magicians had already burst out laughing.

Ronan’s eyebrows drew together. “What are you laughing at?”

“Mr. Lynch,” gasped Strange, trying and failing to control himself, “please understand, Mr. Norrell and I are the greatest magicians of the modern age. We have spent years seeking a countercurse. Now, your sleeping cows are very impressive, and I trust that you and Mr. Parrish are fine young men, but I hardly think a pair of American peasants are capable of developing a spell that not even Mr. Norrell and I –”

With an ugly snarl Ronan threw open the door to his bedroom and flicked on the light. The splotch of darkness on the opposite wall bore into them.

Strange and Norrell’s laughter tapered off.

After a minute, Strange said softly, “Would you look at that.”

“It might be some other kind of shadow,” Norrell said, though he didn’t sound convinced. A man didn’t spend three years in a shroud of eternal night without learning to recognize it. “Or a copy.”

“It’s not a copy,” Ronan snapped.

“How do you know?”

“The inside of my head isn’t a fucking fax machine. I don’t bring back _copies_ unless I made the copy in the dream. And I sure didn’t make _that_. You brought it into Cabeswater and I brought it out.” Ronan’s face was like a stormcloud.

The two magicians exchanged a glance. A minute ago they wouldn’t shut up and now they looked like they were afraid to speak. Finally, timidly, Strange whispered, “And could you do the same with the rest?”

“Maybe,” Ronan said. “I’m not about to have it around the house, though. This isn’t a trash heap.”

The magicians looked at each other. “Perhaps in the middle of the ocean somewhere?”

“The North Pole?”

“I’m not going to the North Pole,” Ronan interjected.

“And I doubt Uskglass built a road to the Pole anyway, Norrell.”

“The gentleman with the thistle-down hair,” Norrell said suddenly.

Strange shuddered. “What about him?”

“His grave. We can install it on his grave.”

* * *

Strange was silent.

They had visited Stephen Black in Lost-hope, quite by accident (they had visited a lot of places by accident), and he had told them of his few moments of great power and of crushing the gentleman with the thistle-down hair under the English landscape. The gentleman’s bones, they thought, were probably still there. The atoms of his silvery hair had been ground up with the dirt and roots and dead leaves that formed English soil.

“I don’t know how I feel about leaving a Pillar of Darkness in the middle of Yorkshire,” said Strange slowly. “What if another English magician wanders into it?”

“No one will wander into it,” said Norrell with conviction.

Norrell was probably right. The Pillar was infamous, more so now than Strange and Norrell themselves. No one would ever go near that part of Yorkshire again. The closest habitable spot was Mr. Segundus’s house, which was a good half-mile away. If Mr. Lynch placed the Pillar of Darkness there, then the gentleman with the thistle-down hair, the person who had stolen Arabella Strange and broken Lady Pole, would be trapped not only by England itself but by the very curse he had created and set against his enemies. Strange could think of no sharper justice.

“All right,” he agreed. “The gentleman’s grave. We’ll do it. Or rather, Mr. Lynch here will do it.”

“Where’s the grave?” Mr. Lynch asked.

“Why, Yorkshire, of course.”

Mr. Lynch snorted. “And how am I going to get to Yorkshire?”

“You’ll come with us, of course. On the King’s Roads.”

* * *

The King’s Roads were not what Adam had expected.

He’d expected something woodsy and mystical like Cabeswater. Instead, the King’s Roads were bleak. Crumbling stone bridges, still black pools, thin shafts of gray light, mind-bending Escher staircases, and, for some inexplicable reason, about a thousand discarded shoes. Occasionally a shadowy figure would dart across one of the bridges or staircases. In one instance Adam was fairly sure the figure was a rat.

“How much longer?” Ronan demanded after what felt like a week. Adam’s feet hurt. He had begun to lean on Ronan’s arm.

“Oh, who knows,” said Strange cheerfully. “The distance is different every time.”

“Of course it is.”

Periodically Strange and Norrell would pause and consult their weird hodgepodge map. Adam considered asking if they actually knew where they were going, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

And then Strange went, “Ah-ha!” and stepped abruptly through a strange stone archway engraved with screaming ravens – and vanished.

“Finally,” muttered Norrell. He followed him.

Ronan and Adam looked at each other.

“Ladies first,” Ronan said.

“Screw you.”

Adam stepped through the archway...

...and onto a wide, desolate English plain.

Ronan bumped into him. “Keep it moving.”

“Screw you,” Adam said again, allowing Ronan’s hand to curl into the shirt at the small of his back. He tipped his face toward the sky. There were no stars.

“It’s not really nighttime,” said Strange apologetically. “It’s high noon, but, you know. Pillar of Darkness and all that.”

For the first time since this whole adventure began, Adam’s skin crawled.

Strange pointed to a spot in the distance that Adam couldn’t see. “Starecross Abbey is over there. That’s where my good friend Mr. Segundus lives.”

“Won’t he mind this big... you know?”

“Hm?” Strange blinked. “Oh, no, I’m sure he won’t notice.”

Adam turned around. Behind him was Ronan, and behind Ronan was a hawthorn tree, its trunk and branches twisted in such a way that it looked like an arch when Adam observed it from the corner of his eye. He shivered. Ronan caught the motion and pressed his fingertips to the base of Adam’s neck. “You okay?”

“This isn’t Glendower magic,” Adam murmured. “Or Greywaren magic. This is...”

“Why, this is English magic, Mr. Parrish,” said Strange.

Ronan said, “English magic is fucking creepy.”

“Oh, it has its appeal,” said Strange absently. “Now, let’s see, where did Stephen say the gentleman’s bones were... here! Right here.”

Adam and Ronan walked to the spot that Strange indicated. It didn’t feel any different.

“So you, Mr. Lynch, will remain here, and Mr. Norrell and I will return to your Cabeswater. And when we are there, you will remove the Pillar of Darkness and entrench it in this spot. Yes?”

“I don’t do the entrenching,” said Ronan belligerently. “It’s gonna have to entrench itself.”

“Yes, yes, very good. Well, we’ll be off, then. Just, er, wait here.”

“Should’ve packed snacks,” said Ronan.

Norrell said, “The Pillar of Darkness won’t cling to _them_ , will it?”

Adam froze. Ronan’s hackles went up.

“Oh,” said Strange. He looked uneasy. “No. No, I don’t think so.” Then he brightened. “Well, there’s only one way to find out!”

Before Adam could protest or Ronan could strangle him, he vanished through the hawthorn arch.

With an uncomfortable backward glance at Adam and Ronan, Norrell followed like a dog, and a few minutes later the darkness vanished. Adam yelped and threw up his hands. The sky was mostly gray clouds, but a feeble shaft of sunlight had peeked through and hit Adam in the face. Once he’d adjusted to the light, he lowered his hands and looked around. On the horizon he spotted a handsome wood-and-stone farmhouse, probably the Starecross Hall that Strange had referred to.

“Ugh,” groaned Ronan, lying down on the grass. “ _The Pillar of Darkness won’t cling to_ them _, will it?_ Like, lead with that.”

“They seem kind of spacey.”

“They’re freaks. We should’ve just kicked them out.”

“You’re the one who offered to help them with their curse.”

Ronan closed his eyes.

“Ronan?”

“Shut up.”

Adam fell silent. The shaft of sunlight had shifted to Ronan’s left cheekbone and the tendon in his neck, and Ronan’s tank top had hiked down below his collarbones. Not for the first time Adam wondered how Ronan could look so like a wolf and at the same time like a delicate baby bird. After a minute he lay down beside Ronan and touched the inside of Ronan’s forearm. Ronan shivered. “I’m sleeping,” he said gruffly.

“Okay.”

The fingers of Ronan’s other hand came to rest on top of Adam’s, and Adam closed his eyes, too.

* * *

Ronan woke up in Cabeswater.

As always, it was a slightly changed Cabeswater – identical in form but different in aura. Ronan felt himself more attuned to the creatures that scurried underground and winged through the air, and he understood the whispering of the trees. Now they were saying: _A castle. A castle. Ronan, a castle._

Ronan followed the whispers.

In a glade with a deep clear pool he found Strange and Norrell, both gazing up at a very large stone building that should _not_ have fit in the clearing.

“We put it back in Yorkshire,” said Norrell bemusedly. “I am certain we did.”

“And we stabilized it,” Strange agreed. “It has not followed us for... goodness, two years at least. Unless it’s been walking behind us all this time and I didn’t notice.” Strange sounded as though he suspected that such a thing was very possible.

Ronan heard a rushing sound and turned. A broad black river was coursing through the trees.

“That’s the River Hurt,” said Norrell gloomily. “Part of it, anyway. Strange, what are we to do? I want Mr. Lynch to vanish the Darkness, not my house!”

“Cabeswater brought the house here for me,” Ronan heard himself say.

The men turned to him. “What?”

As soon as Ronan said it he knew that it was true. He could hear Cabeswater, and Cabeswater could hear him. Cabeswater had understood his intentions; Cabeswater would help him fulfill them. “This must be where you keep all your grimoires or whatever.”

“Yes,” said Strange, at the same time Norrell said, “No.”

“I’ll remove your creepy pillar in exchange for books for Adam.”

“Absolutely not,” Norrell said.

Strange rolled his eyes. “Oh, come, Norrell, you don’t think you’re being just a little difficult?”

“No.”

“Magic has already returned to England. All your hoarding was for naught. It’s time to share.”

“No.”

Strange wrung his hands, then turned pleadingly to Ronan. “How _many_ books?”

Hell, Ronan didn’t know. He didn’t even think they would work. But he had seen Adam’s eyes brighten when Strange said _Do the magic_. Ronan had lived his whole life with Cabeswater’s haunting, gripping magic inside his head. He couldn’t imagine losing it. Couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for Adam to give it up.

Actually, he could. It must have been horrible. But now Ronan could give it back to him. Adam Parrish would be a magician again.

“How many are there?”

“Not very many,” Norrell said, but Strange spoke over him. “Oh, four or five thousand, give or take.”

Ronan scowled. “How about, like, ten.”

“Ten!” shouted Norrell, scandalized.

“Okay, twenty.”

“TWENTY!”

“Let’s settle on fifteen,” Strange suggested.

Ronan shrugged and stuck out his hand, and Strange shook it. Then Strange looked meaningfully at Norrell, who jammed his hands into his armpits and sulked.

“Norrell,” Strange said sternly.

“They’re _my_ books.”

“And Arabella’s my wife, and I cannot even visit her because of this hellish darkness. Fifteen books out of five thousand. Come, my friend.”

“Arabella! Again with Arabella! You never even mention her unless you want something from me!”

Strange flinched.

Immediately Norrell looked like he wished he hadn’t said it. But still he set his mouth and crossed his arms, like a schoolboy. “I have not left your side for three years,” Norrell said to Strange. “I have worked with you, practiced with you, suffered under your horrible curse. I have asked nothing of you. And now you ask me to give away my books! I will not do it. No, no, no. Arabella will have to wait.”

“He’s not gonna dump you, old man,” Ronan interrupted. His own body had instinctively mimicked Norrell’s hunched defensiveness, and he had to make a conscious effort to relax his back muscles, which pissed him off. “Get over yourself.”

Strange said, “What?”

“He’s scared that once you have this Arabella person, you’ll leave him alone,” Ronan said, bored and irritated and mad at himself. He’d come here to get books for Adam, not to relive his own weaknesses and listen to old men bicker. “Tell him you won’t so we can get a goddamn move on.”

Strange stared at Norrell, who blushed resentfully and stared at his feet. Suddenly Strange looked deeply uncomfortable, almost like he was in pain. “You cannot think that.”

“She’s your wife,” Norrell whispered.

“Christ,” Ronan said.

In a stiff, choked-off voice, Strange insisted, “Norrell. I would never.”

“You did once before.”

“And you stole all the copies of my book and had me accused of fraud!” The darkness snaked through the grass and the trees whispered in Latin. “Please, my friend. Let us not revisit old quarrels. We have been through too much. I will not desert you again, not even for my wife. And I believe you will not threaten me again. But please, Norrell, please. It is only fifteen books.”

They stared at each other for way too long. Norrell was the first to look away.

“Are you fucking done yet?” Ronan demanded. “A couple of old books in exchange for the chance to see the sun again. That’s the offer. Take it or leave it.”

Strange looked at Norrell pleadingly.

Norrell sighed. “We’ll take it.”

Strange looked like he might like to kiss Norrell, but Norrell, thankfully, was too far away.

So Strange and Norrell went inside, and what felt like six hours later (though it might have been a week, or ten minutes), they returned bearing armloads of old books with new spines. Ronan didn’t have time to examine the books well enough to manifest them properly, so he gestured to Strange and Norrell to nestle them between a tree’s roots. It took Norrell rather longer to release the books than it did Strange.

Then Ronan turned his focus to the darkness.

He had manifested a piece of it before, so he thought he knew how it felt. But manifesting part of it and manifesting the whole thing were two very different tasks indeed. As Norrell and Strange waited by the manor, Ronan paced around the perimeter of the darkness, sizing it up, getting a sense of its general shape and depth. It was perfectly cylindrical, and it extended upward as far as the eye could see. Ronan wondered if it went underground, too, and if there was any way to tell. If somewhere in Australia a couple of surfers were standing around in pitch darkness looking confused.

He plunged his hands into it, watching them vanish into a perfect inky blackness that tasted and felt like the Cabeswater air; and then he took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and woke up.

* * *

Six months later, Adam Parrish sat cross-legged on his bed, rereading Belasis’s _Instructions_. Since Christmas break he had read the _Instructions_ twelve times, _The Language of Birds_ four times, and _The History and Practice of English Magic_ twice. He had twelve more books to get through, which was a lot considering only six of them were written in English. Three were in Latin, one was in French, one was in Sanskrit, and one, bizarrely enough, was written in the language of the trees, which Ronan was painstakingly translating for him.

Adam closed the _Instructions_ and placed it back on the pile on his nightstand. It had taken him a full month to identify the emotion that bubbled in his throat every time he so much glanced at the books, but finally he had recognized it. It was excitement. Exhilaration. Anticipation.

Magic.

Now he glanced at his own hands and reached for one of the books he hadn’t opened yet, a thin tome entitled _A Child’s History of the Raven King_. “This is not a real magic book,” Strange had said apologetically when Adam went to Cabeswater to pick up the books, “but every modern magician ought to have a preliminary understanding of the Raven King.”

The publication date was 1807.

Adam said aloud, “Modern.”

He regarded the publication page for a minute, then shrugged. He could ask Strange about it when he saw him next. For whatever reason, Strange and Norrell hadn’t been able to get Hurtfew Abbey out of Cabeswater, so Strange and Norrell still dropped by every so often to look something up and polish the silverware.

Adam finished the book in two hours. When he had read the last page, he got to work on his English final, his very last paper of the term. Halfway through the paper he closed the document and picked up _A Child’s History_ again.

In the morning, he packed his clothes and books into the Hondoyota, completed his essay, and turned it in. Then he called Ronan.

“Parrish!” Ronan said.

Adam blushed. He always fucking blushed. He couldn’t help it. “Lynch. Listen –”

There was a scuffle on the other end, and then a new voice trilled, “Adam!”

Adam’s heart jumped. “Blue! You’re back! How was Venezuela!”

“It was _rad_. We ate guinea pig. Gansey got a tattoo.”

Adam nearly dropped the phone. “You’re kidding me.”

“On his _bicep_.”

Oh my God, Adam thought. “How... how does it look?”

“I’m so into it,” Blue said, sounding disgusted with herself. “Guess what it is.”

“A picture of Glendower’s face.”

“It’s a line from an _Old_ _English epic poem_ ,” Blue crowed. In the background Adam heard Gansey shrill, “It is NOT from the poem, it’s from the GARNET ANNOTATION!”

“Will you put Gansey on?”

Another scuffle, and a moment later Gansey said sullenly, “It’s not from the poem. I couldn’t find an accurate translation.”

“Gansey.”

“Yes? When are you coming back to Henrietta? We want to go to Nino’s and I have to make sure Child hasn’t torn down Monmouth.”

“I have something I think you’d like to see.”

“Oh,” said Gansey, pleased. “What is it?”

Adam got into the Hondoyota and placed _A Child’s History_ on the passenger seat. He thought of Strange, gesturing at the Darkness and saying, _I spent years searching for him, and look where it got us_. He thought, too, of the look in Strange’s eyes, a look that spoke, despite Strange's words, not of regret but of satisfaction. He thought of Gansey saying _Excelsior_. “I thought you might like to go on a quest.”

**Author's Note:**

> Credit for Gansey's tattoo bit goes to [sashayed](http://sashayed.tumblr.com) and [lilah80](http://lilah80.tumblr.com)'s [Tumblr discussion on the subject](http://sashayed.tumblr.com/post/144833360265/lilah80-sashayed-also-zoe-kravitzs-nose).


End file.
